The Landscapes of Post-War Infrastructure: Culture, Amenity, Heritage and Industry

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This research aims to understand the value of the landscapes created around infrastructure projects in post-war Britain. As these landscapes are altered, it is important to understand their cultural value, amenity value and heritage value, alongside their environmental and ecological qualities. At the moment there is no established way of looking at all of the complicated factors that are involved in changing these landscapes. There are some existing ways of assessing landscapes, but it is hard to measure certain types of value, especially in and around the landscapes of infrastructure. Together with new and existing partners from universities, industry, government and the cultural sector, through a series of meetings and events, we will develop guidelines to help inform assessments of, and future decision-making about, landscapes of this type.In the sweeping modernisation of the post-war period, as the motorways, power stations and reservoirs were built, railways were closed and sites like open cast mines were recovered, there was official policy in place to create spaces for leisure and amenity alongside industrial development or reclamation. Landscape architects were employed to address issues of composition and visibility and the profession itself expanded in scope and scale as a response. The particular circumstances of governance and finance created an innovative and research-led holistic approach to infrastructural design. In February 2019 we held a conference about the Landscape and Architecture of Post-War British Infrastructure and one of the emerging themes was to do with the role of these landscapes to the public. Many of the sites are now more than 50 years old and their habitats, as well as their use, are well established as playgrounds, golf courses, sailing clubs, nature reserves, bridleways, cycle paths and sports fields. Like much of the peri-urban landscape in Britain, infrastructural landscapes are under development pressure, this research will provide new ways of thinking about the less obvious and multi-layered values of these sites by inviting contribution from a broad range of interested parties.Traditional forms of landscape assessment are based on quantitative methods and visual analysis, here we wish to understand the historic and socio-cultural values of these landscapes, the things that are hard to measure - like atmosphere, enjoyment, fulfilment, wellbeing, memory and association. One way of finding this out is to talk to those who use these sites, in a variety of ways. The social, cultural, ecological and amenity value of landscapes of infrastructure are closely tied to the communities where they developed, where lots of people relied upon them for employment. As these sites change, we seek to discover how to measure some of the intangible aspects of these landscapes and those aspects which should be thought about when assessing, protecting or developing them. In order to do so we will use skills that are typical of architectural research: we will find maps, plans, policy documents, government records and correspondence, and cross-reference these to give an account of the history and geography of particular sites. We will make new diagrams, maps, drawings and models using this information to visualise the change of landscapes to help us talk to artists, local communities and user groups about how they use the landscapes of infrastructure and how they value such spaces. We will ask our invited artists to share their methods of working with infrastructural landscapes and the values they place upon them. We will invite students to engage with the research and its synthesis and allow the wider public to share their views through the production of an exhibition.At the end of the project we will produce a collaborative report that summarises our findings and provides guidance to those forming decisions about the heritage and futures of the landscapes of infrastructure.